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3/21/2013 1:02PM

Sierra Club Director Comments on Use of Fossil Fuels

The Sierra Club and many other environmental groups insist that fossil fuels have no part in the nation’s energy future. WSJ's John Bussey talks Sierra Club's Michael Brune at the ECO:nomics conference on concerns about the use of natural gas as a "transition" fuel.

This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.

I ... your ... it's ... yes ... she call ... and every one after another utility ... switch ... from coal ... yes I imagine you ... the CEO of waking up in the morning ... throwing open your shutters ... on N C thrilled a trail ... of ... us can work yes ... but something tells me that that's ... it's ... you are perceptive I'd I'd I do with that in the morning at producing a lot ... aam ... but ... it up our hope is that as call comes off line that we're replacing it with as much ... as possible ... we acknowledge that gases Wang or will play a role in the future as we begin to keep our minds ... the power sector but we also realize that we have to ... put much greater emphasis on solar and wind ... by Michael CSC's ... to be ... that the paper round gas has evolved dramatically in the last five years to use the ... it was very much favor ... I guess it's a ... fraction of the carbon ... footprint cool ... nephew iPad and iPod that have folks up on stage five six seven years ago you would iPad most environmentalist arguing that gas is ... an important transition fuel bridge fuel ... that was based on the assessment that gas when its iron ... urns with about half the greenhouse gas emissions compared to call ... that is still true when gas is burned ... but the reality what we've learned over the last five six seven years is that the process of extracting ... to pass through fracking is much more carbon intensive than previously thought ... in the process of distributing transmitting natural gas ... also has significant ... step on the implications of that though this method to teach but we did this and so the gap between gas and coal has narrowed considerably depending on how much the kids there is to be no cap for guest actually be worse than all it's ... it's ... it's it's ... so we're still not there at the firm conclusion that ... the state's key ... rates on ... that some ... groups believed to be ... the case this is a debatable point ... right that's the big concern is that we don't have nobody has complete comprehensive data about the rate at which McCain this week ... so ... EPA has done the most comprehensive study it's quite The that it says that weekend rates are about two point four percent and even EPA says that that is not up to date it's not accurate ... some of the studies that have come out and say that if if gas leakage rates are around three percent ... give or take a little bit that eliminates ... that kept its main gas and coal ... Noah did a study on just one gas field in new targets for the week and trades were nine percent and was even shale gas ... so the fact that we are ... developing an energy transition that is relying on fuel natural gas ... about which we have incomplete information about the climate impacts ... should scare everybody yes everybody who as concerns about having stable climbed right ... all the studies have their challenge its right to do that in and they have been challenged ... um but let's say that it's happening ... maybe at the rates that read this up ... at six ... thousand that's ... mechanical engineering ... to fix the wellhead to fix the pipe one depicts a distribution point ... there are some technologies yet green completions at the wellhead into a great deal to minimize the amount of methane leakage ... we can repair and replace natural gas pipelines all across the country ... and significantly reduced amount of leakage coming from the transmission system ... our perspective is that we need to look at what investments we should make an order to create a country that we need ... and whether or not it makes sense to spend hundreds of billions of dollars in ... fossil fuel infrastructure coal plants oil pipelines gas plants ... when we know that we have to be Korber NYSE's quickly as possible ... every billion dollars that's invested in new gas ... fracking ... oil pipelines coal plants is a billion dollars better invested ... in solar and wind ... energy efficiency ... but we've we've heard from the hospital ... Lamentations to ... set ... up and we ... we ... know that we have this ... this abundance of gas ... up are you saying that natural gas ... is not ... a bridge ... too ... an alternative energy future ... that we should be ... abandoning that approach ... we ... not answer question for just a second to say that we didn't hear and Alaska ... will we did here last night ... and what we ... might not hear enough of over next couple days is that ... we do have a climate crisis ... last year we had record routes ... record wildfires ... record temperatures record stores in the US ... all of that was in the year we had one degree of one ... so for ... the year where the temperature increase last year was a full degree Fahrenheit above above the previous track ... if we lock and gas is the primary replacement fossil fuels ... not only will we not be able to reach our goal of keeping warming below three point six degrees for ... two degree Celsius ... but will lock in the future of seven degrees ... an increase of seven degrees ... so we're Artie seen this damage at one point two degrees Fahrenheit so far ... we're looking at seven degrees ... of course that can't be average you ... cannot ... we have to verbally BTU some doubts over the next few years over the next decade ... our primary goal from our perspective should be to use as little gas is possible ... while we're also it's now all the good news the good news here ... is that over the last few years as we've learned more about CAS clean energy has become much more portable ... that's being installed at record rates ... it's now starting to be an outcast in place across the country ... a little bit further south ... L a is getting off call ... further south still San Diego's gas and electric just ... picked a PV plant overcast based on price alone ... new Mexico new gas is coming and half the price of coal a half price of new call ... so we have an ability right now to rely on solar and wind combined with efficiency ... to completely replace all fossil fuels to take up much much larger portion ... of the energy mix them up speed this up ...